Margaret Quinn in what used to be her living room. She plans on moving back into her home shortly even though the reconstruction is not complete. / bob bielk/staff photographer

Toms River, NJ-1/16/13-Bob Bielk/ Asbury Park Press Staff Photographer-Residents of Bay Stream Dr. in Toms River trying to figure out how to proceed with storm recovery after Sandy severely damaged their homes. Katie Lachowicz and her children l-r Dylan, 7, Bailey, 4 and Cooper, 5, outside their bayside home. The home has been in her family for 60 years.

Toms River, NJ-1/16/13-Bob Bielk/ Asbury Park Press Staff Photographer-Residents of Bay Stream Dr. in Toms River trying to figure out how to proceed with storm recovery after Sandy severely damaged their homes. Katie Lachowicz and her children l-r Bailey, 4, Cooper, 5, and Dylan, 7, in one of the bedrooms of their bayside home. The home has been in her family for 60 years.

Toms River, NJ-1/16/13-Bob Bielk/ Asbury Park Press Staff Photographer-Residents of Bay Stream Dr. in Toms River trying to figure out how to proceed with storm recovery after Sandy severely damaged their homes. Katie Lachowicz and her children l-r Dylan, 7, Bailey, 4, Cooper, 5, in the kitchen of their bayside home. The home has been in her family for 60 years.

Toms River, NJ-1/16/13-Bob Bielk/ Asbury Park Press Staff Photographer-Residents of Bay Stream Dr. in Toms River trying to figure out how to proceed with storm recovery after Sandy severely damaged their homes. Katie Lachowicz and her children l-r Dylan, 7, Bailey, 4, Cooper, 5, in the kitchen of their bayside home. The home has been in her family for 60 years.

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TOMS RIVER — Margaret Quinn once described her lagoon-side Silverton house as a dream home.

But in October, superstorm Sandy swelled Barnegat Bay, flooding the entire first floor of the home that Quinn shared with her husband and two children. More than three months later, her family lives in an apartment while they repair the house.

Uncertain of how to proceed with rebuilding, Quinn said she feels like she is living a nightmare.

“Every day is another lesson learned, another battle, another door slamming in our faces,” she said.

Like thousands of others, Quinn must decide how to rebuild to new construction requirements, or face exorbitant flood insurance rates.

Quinn’s home, like others damaged by Sandy in Monmouth and Ocean counties, is now in a designated v-zone, or “velocity” zone, based on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Advisory Base Flood Elevation maps.

The new designation means the family must raise their home 13 feet, 7 feet higher than its present height, Quinn said. In addition, walls designed to break away from the foundation and special support pilings under the home are required in the v-zones.

The cost to raise the house — and install new flooring, hook up utilities at the higher elevation, and replace the heating system — could cost as much as $150,000, Quinn estimates.

“It’s not just my house,” she said. “It’s hundreds and thousands of homes. This is insane.”

About 3.8 million New Jersey residents live in flood hazard areas, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. How many homes are reclassified in v-zones after Sandy in unclear, because FEMA does not keep a tally.

A velocity zone requires structures to be elevated above the Advisory Base Flood Elevation, as well as withstand hurricane-force winds and wave action. The designation requires homes to be anchored, usually with pilings, and have breakaway walls to divert the force of the water.

But Quinn and others believe reclassifying so many homes into the expanded v-zones could make neighborhoods unaffordable.

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Councilman George Wittman of Toms River estimates raising his own Sandy-damaged Silverton home could cost about $80,000.

“It’s a nightmare, and it’s going to be cost prohibitive for most of our residents,” he said.

The councilman estimated FEMA’s Advisory Base Flood Elevation maps place about 5,000 Toms River homes into velocity zones. In total, some 10,000 homes in the township suffered Sandy-related damage, he said.

Many homeowners with extensive damage must rebuild to FEMA’s building requirements, or face flood insurance premiums as high as $31,000, according to the DEP.

But building to the new regulations will prove challenging.

“With an existing house, you lift the house out, and if you can’t move the house out of the way to drive the piles, there’s no easy way to retrofit that foundation to make it compliant with the v-zone standards,” said Charles Lindstrom, an expert in civil engineering and land surveying with Lindstrom, Diessner & Carr of Brick. “It’s very technical and it’s difficult to accomplish without a very significant cost. … Most of these houses can’t really be moved to allow these piles to be driven.

“It’s going to, in my view, make a lot of these houses tear-downs rather than salvageable homes,” he added.

Katie Lachowicz, 35, of the Silverton section of Toms River is faced with the same dilemma. The ranch that she shared with her husband and three children flooded with water during Sandy. The force of the waves pushed four feet of water into her garage, broke her sliding glass doors, and punched a hole in a wall, she said. After a personal watercraft in the flood waters nearly broke doors to the outside, Lachowicz feared a boat would come through the home. When water began to fill her living space, she fled to the attic.

“I went the back rafters,” she said. “I brought all three kids… I brought the dog back there. My husband gave me a hammer and a radio.”

That was the last night the family stayed in the home. Three months later and still displaced, Katie Lachowicz is considering selling the house that her family owned for 60 years.

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“Flood insurance almost put us over (the edge) last time,” she said. “If we do not elevate to the 13 feet, flood insurance is probably going to triple.”

Lachowicz said she is considering demolishing the house and building higher.

“I think you’re going to see folks make those kinds of decisions,” said Wittman, the councilman.

He believes the new velocity zones could force many people out of Toms River’s waterfront communities. Even homeowners who did not experience much damage from Sandy might be forced to elevate their homes because of the looming rise in flood insurance rates, Wittman said.

Rates for the National Flood Insurance Program are set by the federal government.

“It could force a lot of demolitions, or we could have a lot of residents walk away,” said Wittman. “So it’s a bad scenario any way you look at it.”

Lindstrom and Wittman believe FEMA’s v-zones extend too far into neighborhoods, and include homes that are unlikely to be battered by waves even if a flood ravaged the community again.

“I don’t think the calculation is accurate,” said Wittman. “If you’re five houses away from the bay, it’s not likely the wave is going to hit your house.”

“Personally, I think it’s kind of overreaching. I haven’t seen that kind of damage,” Lindstrom said.

Margaret Quinn, the Silverton resident, worries what lies in the future for her own neighborhood.

“This is an incorrect flood plain (map). This is not a communist society where we need to follow what they (FEMA officials) are saying,” she said. “We don’t live on the ocean. We’re nowhere near the ocean. Why do we have to comply with these ocean front construction codes?”

Asked if she will consider selling, she said no.

“It was a nice house,” she said. “It’s our home. No, we don’t want to give it up… It’s not what we want.”